Supply chains today are facing a quiet but profound shift. What used to be paperwork and compliance checks is becoming structured data, ready for carbon accountants, regulators, and investors alike. At CommonShare, the updates we’re rolling out aren’t just UI tweaks or export options—they’re building the foundation for the next era of accountability.
This week’s product changes may look subtle: adding process tagging to facilities, reshaping Bill of Material exports. But taken together, they mark the move from manual reporting toward interoperable graph data. And that’s exactly what companies will need when the metrics of tomorrow—carbon footprints, water intensity, embedded energy—become as critical as financial statements are today.
Editing Transformations
Imagine you’re sitting in a forestry office in Java, trading teak logs. To the outside world, it looks simple: logs in, logs out. But in the world we actually live in—the one where regulators, investors, and climate accountants are circling—it’s not enough to say what you did. You have to say where, how, and under whose rules.
With the latest updates to the graph on CommonShare, the interoperable facility, process, roles, all from common taxonomies, can be tagged. On paper it looks bureaucratic. In practice, it’s the quiet start of a revolution. This is how raw operational detail hardens into graph data: the thing you’ll need not just to pass today’s audits, but to survive tomorrow’s PCF, PEF, and LCA regimes. Today you tick a box for “waste produced.” Tomorrow that same tick determines whether Brussels calls your chair carbon-neutral—or carbon-toxic.
Exporting BOMs
The Bill of Material (BOM) export got its own upgrade. It now unpacks into six sheets: nodes, facilities, characteristics, standards, processes, and metadata.
That may sound like another spreadsheet, but think of it more like a map of a baseball diamond. The nodes are the players, the facilities - the stadiums, the standards - the rulebooks, the processes - the plays. Alone, each tab is dull. Together, they tell you whether your team is winning—or losing.
You know what else? The export is structured graph data! That means it’s not just “compliance-ready” today (FSC, USDA Organic, chain-of-custody). It’s also the raw material for tomorrow’s carbon accountants. A chair made of teak and rubberwood is no longer just furniture; it’s a bundle of emissions data waiting to be unlocked and scored.
Why It Matters
The supply chain world is about to be judged on numbers no one had to report ten years ago. Carbon footprints, water intensity, embedded energy—the metrics of a future where sustainability isn’t PR, it’s accounting.
Our updates this week—processes/activities on facilities and the Bill of Material (BOM) export—don’t look flashy. But they’re the scaffolding. The invisible infrastructure that lets you answer the old compliance questions and the new carbon ones without reinventing your approach.
That’s the story: we’re quietly turning process names and spreadsheets into the language of future regulation and standards. Compliance today; PCF, PEF, LCA tomorrow.
The takeaway: What looks like a UI tweak is actually future-proofing. When the questions change, you’ll already have the answers.